


help me stop loving you

by hubristic



Category: Stray Kids (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Non-Famous, Angst with a Happy Ending, Friends to Lovers, Light Angst, M/M, Misunderstandings, but for reference theyre in uni, ig, is that it, literally the only thing i write is friends to lovers someone help, oh shit wait i forgot, the uni part doesn’t actually show up tho LMAO
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-24
Updated: 2020-10-24
Packaged: 2021-03-08 20:48:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,608
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27182674
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hubristic/pseuds/hubristic
Summary: seungmin wonders who the fuck would be knocking at his door at two in the morning, but he finds that no matter who he pictures, he still kinda wants to hit them over the head with a frying pan.
Relationships: Han Jisung | Han/Kim Seungmin
Comments: 8
Kudos: 99
Collections: n → s





	help me stop loving you

**Author's Note:**

> if this looks familiar no it doesn’t <3 peep my yuwin don’t say sorry fic 🧍♂️

seungmin wonders who the fuck would be knocking at his door at two in the morning, but he finds that no matter who he pictures, he still wants to hit them over the head with a frying pan. 

he wasn’t sleeping; he doesn’t seem to be able to lately.  _ of course he didn’t really want you.  _ he’s never been able to fall asleep quickly unless he’s exhausted beyond piecing together a coherent thought and so he’s been doing just that. working and studying until he, in the most literal of terms, drops. 

he thinks about taking a frying pan with him to the door just in case it turns out to be a murderer. a murderer probably wouldn’t knock. he wouldn’t know; he isn’t a murderer. and really it depends on their m.o. (it probably wasn’t a good idea to watch a crime show so late into the night - so early into the morning, technically. but, he has nothing better to do). either way, he has an exam he doesn’t want to take on thursday so he decides against it.

seungmin leaves the chain lock in place, because maybe being murdered isn’t the ideal way to go, actually, and opens the door. all of the annoyance drains from his veins.

of all the billions of people on earth, he didn’t picture finding jisung behind the door. he didn't dare to.

“jisung,” he breathes. 

“no.” seungmin closes the door before jisung has the chance to open his mouth again and turns the lock back into place.  _ no. _ he leans his forehead to the painted wood and exhales shakily. despite himself, despite the hurt he feels, he pictures jisung lifting a slender hand and pressing his palm to the other side of the door, the wood being the only thing between them because he's always been a romantic whether he's liked it or not. 

the love hazed image in his mind is what drives him to open the door again and face his reality. because his reality is never what he thinks, it's never what he wants. he lets out a short puff of air and shakes his head before sliding the chain out of place and undoing the lock.  _ you're supposed to be trying. _

jisung’s standing in the same exact spot, unmoved. he blinks, coming back from being lost in thought.

“seungmin _.  _ were you awake?” jisung’s eyebrows furrow worriedly. seungmin feels queasy.

_ yes.  _ “of course not. it’s two in the morning and some of us have normal sleep schedules.” seungmin bites out. “what are you doing here?” he asks, feeling a different type of tired than the one that sends you into sleep.

they’ve only just started talking again. they’re at the point where they can meet with friends to fill in the awkward silences and text so that they have time to think about their responses. it’s calculated and it’s planned and seungmin is letting jisung back in. he  _ wants  _ to let jisung back in. but, they’re not at the point where you can show up  _ (drunk?)  _ at ass o’clock in the morning on a friday night. seungmin is guarded; jisung becomes a little more loose lipped and a little more bold with a drink in him. seungmin can't smell alcohol on him. but why else would he be here, other than having one too many drinks finding a home in the pit of his stomach.

he still steps to the side to let jisung in.  _ it’s cold _ , he tells himself  _ you’re letting him in because it’s cold.  _ the functioning part of his brain tries to remind him that he lives in an apartment complex and if anything, the stuffy hallway is warmer than his apartment.

seungmin levels jisung with a glare but jisung doesn’t falter in the slightest. “jisung,” seungmin says. “what are you doing here?”

“how are you?”

“you can't answer a question with a question, jisung.”

jisung shrugs. “maybe i'm here to know how you're doing.”

seungmin raises an eyebrow. “texting is a thing.”

“you were sleeping.” he pauses. “how are you?”

“tired. it happens to be two in the morning.”  _ i miss you even at two in the morning. especially at two in the morning.  _ seungmin looks at jisung. he finally allows himself to just  _ look.  _ “how are  _ you _ ?”

the smile that spreads across jisung’s lips is one of the most heart wrenching things he’s seen and he reprimands himself for thinking so. “i miss you.”

seungmin pretends like he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. but he does. he does and he kinda wants to cry because they tried. it's his fault they're like this. he made it into something bigger than it should've been, than it is. because suddenly he was incapable of pretending like he isn't head over heels in love with jisung, when the only thing that changed is that jisung knew. he wants to be the only one of them allowed to miss the other, because he felt  _ more  _ but it just didn’t work like that and he hated that it didn’t.

they _tried_ but then jisung probably did something stupid like smile at seungmin like he always did and seungmin started crying. it was the kind of sobbing that you haven't done since you were four years old and you couldn't do anything but hiccup and sob and you can’t really breathe. your sobs are bigger than yourself and it feels like you're crying _about_ something much larger than you could ever handle when it was probably over a popsicle. over a smile. his gasps for air were broken and _he_ _felt_ broken. so he let jisung hold him to prevent all of his pieces from falling apart. that was the last time they had spoken for a while.

“i saw you yesterday.”

jisung makes a noise from the back of his throat. “it's not the same. you know it's not the same.”

seungmin wants to scream. “is that all you came to say?”

“let’s go out,” jisung says.

seungmin raises an eyebrow. “to where?” he doesn’t know why he’s asking. it’s not like he’s going to say yes.  _ don’t fucking say yes.  _

jisung shrugs. “let’s get food.”

_ let’s get  _ fucking  _ food -  _ “tomorrow? or when? jisung i’m tired and we could’ve just done this over the fucking  _ phone _ -” 

“right now.” 

“ _ right now _ ? jisung. jisung aren’t you drunk? how did you even get here, didn’t you take a cab?  _ jesus -  _ ”

jisung takes a step forward and splutters. “i’m  _ not _ . why would you even think that? i drove here.”   
  


seungmin kind of still wishes he brought the frying pan to the door. “god. fine.  _ fine.  _ let’s go get fucking food at two in the fucking morning when we don’t even know if there’s a fucking restaurant open nearby.”

jisung blinks. says: “it doesn’t have to be nearby.”

and just like that seungmin’s anger dissolves into a want to be with the person who has always made everything easy. a small laugh bubbles from seungmin’s chest and he lets himself give jisung a small grin. indulgent for both of them. there’s no point in hiding how gone he is. jisung already knows.

jisung smiles.

  
  


“i get to choose the music. i refuse to listen to the soundtrack of one of your fucking animes,” seungmin says. he presses on the preset stations, discovering that they haven’t changed from what he set them as. part of him had assumed that jisung had changed them back to what they had been before. part of him wanted jisung to have changed them. he wanted a part of jisung to be so affected by seungmin not having such an active role in his life anymore that he couldn’t bear to listen to the same music as before. 

he reminds himself that it isn’t as big of a deal to jisung. he didn’t mean the same to jisung as jisung meant to him.

“you know,” jisung muses, “you curse a lot more when you’re tired.”

seungmin rolls his eyes and pulls his feet up onto the dashboard. 

“seatbelt,” jisung tells him without looking up from his phone. seungmin slides the belt across his torso and clicks it into place as jisung puts his phone in the car mount. “the diner is only ten minutes away but it’s going to close in like - ” he squints at the time, “- forty minutes. and since you’re a slow eater -” he grins as seungmin huffs, “- we can eat at the park that’s down the street from it.”

“okay,” seungmin hums, not paying all too much attention to jisung’s words, but to the cadence and soft tone of his voice. 

the car ride is silent for the most part. jisung hums along to some songs and when they approach a light on red he grumbles on how driving laws should be different at night. seungmin says if he’s so bothered he should just drive straight through the red light, but smacks jisung’s knee as a reprimand when jisung revs the engine as if he’s really going to, making jisung let out a squeaky laugh that seungmin doesn’t want to admit he missed as much as he did. 

seungmin gets out of the car feeling particularly light. 

the diner is unsurprisingly empty. there’s a group of three people in the far end, and there are two girls talking in hushed tones behind the counter, quiet for no apparent reason. but he gets it. there’s a silence in the atmosphere he doesn’t want to break. they order: jisung doesn’t let seungmin pay. they both shove their cards above the other’s to the employee until jisung shoves two fingers into seungmin’s side, making him screech and lunge at jisung. jisung slides his card to the employee who looks tired but has a soft smile that seungmin understands all too well. the world is endeared by han jisung, and why shouldn’t it be?

seungmin hates how easy it all is. he hates how last week he wouldn’t have been able to touch jisung but now every time they touch it feels like they  _ should  _ be. he hates how it’s so easy for jisung to become part of his life again, and he hates how it’s probably because of just how much he missed him, even if he didn’t want to. he hates that it’s probably in part of fact that it’s so late at night when he wants it to just be them, only them who brings them back together again. he hates a lot of things, and he hates how jisung isn’t one of them. 

they sit at a table by the door to wait for their food to be prepared. seungmin immediately tears the top part of the straw wrapper off and wraps his lips around the exposed straw, ready to shoot it at jisung. jisung smiles wickedly, and his eyes widen with glee as he unwraps the top half of his own straw.

“distance or target?” jisung asks. 

“distance.” seungmin hates that he can’t help but laugh at jisung’s exaggerated groan. . 

“ _ distance? _ ” jisung whines. “you  _ know  _ you always win when it’s distance.” 

seungmin raises an eyebrow. “then you shouldn’t have let me choose, sucker.”

jisung winks, and there's a pang in seungmin’s chest. “you know i’m always a sucker for you, baby.” 

seungmin’s heart clenches and he feels his heart drop. he remembers every time jisung called him baby. the first time he had ever called him baby, seungmin had pushed him off his couch and jisung had smiled so wide and the edges of his eyes crinkled. the last time jisung had called him baby, seungmin told him he loved him the next day and jisung told him nothing but  _ i’m so sorry. _ it’s a casual thing, it’s  _ supposed  _ to be a casual thing, and it was. he promises it was, at first, in the beginning. and he doesn’t remember when that changed.

“please don’t say that.” jisung looks at him, confused, and he feels stupidly small. 

“i don’t -”

“jisung please. i can’t - when you call - you -”

“oh.” seungmin ducks his head,  _ so stupid  _ and _ small _ . “i’m sorry,” jisung says.

“it’s not your fault.”

and it isn’t. it's not his fault seungmin fell in love with him, and it's not his fault for not loving seungmin back. maybe he flirted, maybe he made seungmin feel  _ special _ , and maybe seungmin was hurt because  _ how could he do that,  _ but seungmin knew it wasn’t his fault, and he could never be mad at him for not loving him. love doesn't work like that. seungmin let himself get caught up in the feeling of being wanted when he wasn't.

  
  


if there was one person who he could talk to about anything and everything, it was changbin. 

so changbin sat across from him in their booth at that stupid, hipster, hole-in-the-wall cafe, listening. because changbin listens. he doesn't judge anyone or anything, and he doesn't sugarcoat his words, and he doesn't tell you what you want to hear. changbin tells you how it is, and tells you what you need to hear.

if he was surprised to hear that seungmin loved jisung, he didn't show it. his eyebrows quirked up towards the edges of the hair falling onto his forehead when seungmin told him about how jisung had rejected him lightly. changbin didn't look at him with pity, but with sympathy.

“and i thought he liked - loved - me too. i guess. because you know -” seungmin felt his ears turn hot and suddenly it was that much harder to make eye contact with changbin. “he was always - always… flirting.” 

but it wasn't just flirting. if it was  _ just  _ flirting it wouldn't have hurt as much. there were lingering gazes and hugs, lasting several beats too long. jisung made everything so easy. he made him laugh. jisung surprised him with take out after a long day at work. but worst of all - best of all - jisung is jisung. he’s kind. he’s caring. he’s so incredibly talented, and seungmin is just. in awe of him everyday, and now jisung knows it. he broke through seungmin’s walls, took them apart brick by brick, and he hates him for it.

jisung became his best friend. he misses his best friend.

changbin hadn't said anything so he rushed to justify himself. “and it's not like i don't know he would. flirt with other people. i know that. but we - i felt - he made me feel…” seungmin licks his lips. 

“special.”

“special.”

changbin sighs. “if i'm being honest, i always thought there was something going on between the two of you, but it wasn’t my place to ask.” seungmin loves changbin a lot. ”but if he says -” he stops his sentence short, his words hanging in the air.  _ if he says he doesn't love you then that's just the way it is.  _ “you're going to have to get over him now. when you didn't know it was different. you can't hold on.”

“i know.” quite frankly, he didn't really want to anyways.

  
  


they sit in silence waiting for their order. the silence carries to the car, it's not heavy, it's not thickly overbearing. 

seungmin is suffocating. it's the opposite of drowning, to the same effect. he's flying too high and the air is spread too thin. seungmin is suffocating. 

seungmin hates being sensitive. he hates how easily he cries and he hates how easily he hurts. he hates that he can’t say no when he should, he hates that he doesn’t want to. seungmin hates a lot of things, lately. and he hates that he hates, because he knows in reality it’s not because he hates it’s because he  _ loves _ and  _ cares  _ so much that he has to protect his feelings with something harder. his feelings are as dangerous as an exposed underbelly, and the solution to that is to have a protective shell. one he wishes he didn’t need. 

most of all he hates how jisung made him love him and couldn’t love him in return.  _ isn't that on you? _

they pull up in the small park, the playground for kids kept to the bare minimum of a slide and two swings and the grass area limited to the size of a single soccer field. 

jisung grabs for the plastic take out bag in the backseat and pulls a blanket into his lap that he hadn’t noticed earlier. he holds the bag up. “stargazing and chill?” 

  
  


“little dipper.”

“big dipper.”

“medium dipper.” and it isn't even _funny_ \- 

jisung lets out a snort of laughter and seungmin’s responding, prideful grin is a little too bright.

jisung’s smile softens. “i’ve missed you.”

  
  


it's sudden. it's sudden and jisung is smiling and laughing and seungmin. seungmin:

seungmin can’t do this. he can’t have jisung dragging him out to get food at two in the morning like this. he can’t stand jisung smiling at him and flirting with him just like before. he can’t bear having jisung tell him that he misses him. seungmin misses him.

he's running.

“seungmin wait -” he grabs seungmin’s wrist firmly, but so, so softly. like he's fragile. breaking. broken.

“let  _ go. _ i knew this was a bad idea. god, we - i - you don't  _ understand _ -”

jisung practically growls, running a hand through his hair. he steps in front of seungmin. “you don’t get to say that. you don’t get to pretend like you’re the only one of us who this is hard for.”

seungmin scoffs. is jisung kidding? he has no idea what it feels like. “we’re not in the same situation here, jisung.” he shoves a long finger at the center of jisung’s chest. “tell me how coming to my fucking house at two in the morning telling me that you miss me and then flirting with me and telling me to go and fucking looking at the stars and shit with you is supposed to help me get over you,” his voices loses it’s edge, it’s  _ armor _ and  _ oh  _ \- his underbelly is showing and all that’s left is a voice that sounds tired, and so much sadder than he ever wanted to be over something like  _ this. _

“i  _ need  _ to get over you jisung. and i can’t do that if you - you treat me the same as before because i thought you -” his voice breaks and seungmin feels so, so weak, “- i thought you loved me.” seungmin finds himself sitting on the ground, his legs curled up to his chest. he rests his forehead against his knees. “god i was so stupid - i’m so stupid.” he doesn’t realize he’s crying until the tears follow the curve of his upper lip, and into his mouth, but he doesn’t care enough to wipe them away. 

for so long he hasn’t been able to even  _ think  _ about what happened with jisung but now that he’s started he can’t stop. he lets jisung grab his hand. “and i don’t  _ blame  _ you. and i don't want you to feel bad. i never want to - to  _ guilt  _ you. you just - i just - i need time. i need time, jisung, i need time.” 

“i'm so sorry.”

seungmin’s head snaps up. with red eyes, and snot running out of his nose and tear track stained cheeks, he looks jisung in the eyes. “don't say you're sorry. please - please don't. it's not your fault-”  _ that you don't love me. just let me have that too. i don't want to love you - _

“i love you.”

and the world stops. 

he breathes.

restarts. 

seungmin doesn’t know what to be other than confused. and angry.

“... excuse me? jisung you can't say-” 

“seungmin. i am in love with you.” he's not lying. 

seungmin knows when jisung is lying. a lying jisung can't make eye contact and the tips of his ears turn red. a lying jisung can't get a sentence out before crumbling into nervous giggles. but this jisung. this jisung is holding his hands out in front of him and  _ vulnerable  _ scribbled across his forehead _.  _ this jisung has wide watery eyes and the only red is painted onto the high slopes of his cheekbones due to the biting winds. and, for the most part jisung doesn’t lie. jisung jokes and jisung pranks. but he doesn't lie. he wouldn't lie, not right now, not to him. 

and seungmin realizes he's been given something. something that so few people have, he can count them on one hand. the power to hurt han jisung. very badly. but seungmin’s  _ been _ hurt. very badly.

“you -. oh.” 

jisung’s hands tremble in the air between them and seungmin sits on his own to stop himself from  _ reaching _ . “it wasn't serious, at first. i - i felt like i didn't deserve you. because of that. because it felt like i was lying to you, somehow - i don't know. maybe i was, at the beginning. but then it was different. it - it became different. and i didn't know how to go from there. i didn't want to ruin our friendship because even if you did love me back i wouldn't know what to do with that, how to be what you needed, i thought you deserved so much more - i  _ think-.”  _ he breathes. “i was. scared. i was scared. of so much, i'm still terrified but you're  _ hurting  _ and i've been hurting you and i should've just told you and i'm sorry, seungmin. i'm so sorry.”

and it's hard. it's hard to comprehend. and he has questions. but it can be easier, he knows that. time and talking can make it easier. jisung takes his hand, and kisses his knuckles and fingertips despite the dirt on his palms. “i'm sorry.” jisung can make it easier.

and seungmin thinks, maybe, they'll be alright. 

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading!! <3 kudos and comments are always appreciated :D
> 
> this was rewritten because i’m not as comfy as i wish i was with nct anymore, and they’ve done a number of things to cause that. so i’m thinking of making a series where i rewrite all of my nct fics into skz fics!! i’ll be leaving the originals up but for the sake of my own comfort i want to start this new project :)


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